State seizes 11-year-old, arrests his mother after marijuana school presentation - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/04/17/state-seizes-11-year-old-arrests-his-mother-after-he-defends-medical-marijuana-during-a-school-presentation/

<comment><USER2> You really do have to be careful what you educate your child about in the US it seems. If they know too much about sex ed' or drugs, you might get social services call on you (or worse they might make baseless accusations of sexual abuse or drug use).

But then again this is a country where letting your kids walk to the local park is grounds for social services and children being removed from their household. So the bar is obviously set extremely low and common sense plays little to no part.

PS - I wonder how long until letting your children play outside (rather than them watching TV/playing video games) is grounds for social services? A lot of people cite "kidnapping" as a justification for the park thing, so by that logic letting them outside out of sight is equally as dangerous...

<comment><USER3> I've had my kid brought home by the cops twice. Both times he was playing on the sidewalk less than 50 feet from our front door. What do you even say to a cop that thinks allowing your child to play in their own front yard unsupervised is dangerous? It's insane. You risk getting a visit from CPS if your child goes unsupervised at any point in time. In practice, it's rare, but not so rare that parent's like me and my wife don't worry about every time our kids run outside to play.

<comment><USER4> Things appear to have become so weird that letting your kids out to play has now gained its own label - "Free range parenting".

Which is really sad. I grew up outdoors, climbing trees, riding my bike wherever I wanted, going to the local park or woods with other kids, etc. I would really hate to see kids being denied the same opportunities due to unwarranted fear being driven into their parents or their communities.

It's not something I've encountered in Europe, where I spent most of my life, kids seem to be living pretty much the same as ever there, but reading about this stuff happening in the US is very sad.

<comment><USER5> It seems you guys forgot about "home of the brave" part.

It looks like the US nation is out of tune with its foundations.

<comment><USER6> It went missing right along with "Land of the Free".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised the women didn't use the three hours she had before the warrant was issued to dispose of the cannabis oil. It should have been clear that she was in a ver high-stakes situation. In modern America and throughout all of human history, it is shown time and time again that the state (little 's') can be a real motherfucker. Never let your guard down.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that is a darn shame. Let's hope she manages to win this despite her mistake. :-)

<comment><USER9> What mistake? She has not done anything wrong according to this report. With only hearsay by a minor in a school setting, I'd be surprised (or maybe not ugh) if the warrant stood up.

<comment><USER8> s/mistake/slip-up/ perhaps, it's too strong a word.

Cannabis oil is seemingly illegal in her state, and as GP mentioned, she had three hours of warning to dispose of it, and failed to do so.

I too suspect the warrant will be discredited, that said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Land of the free.

Seriously, America scares me and I would never visit it. It's a shame, really, the place looks amazing. I hope it will get fixed up in my lifetime...

<comment><USER11> Please dont believe the hype you hear on the internet. The reality for 90% of people here is not what you read on HN, Reddit, or whatever news site.

May I ask what crime and problem free country you hail from?

<comment><USER10> It's the people that makes me afraid. Criminals I can deal with. Crime I can deal with. I think the American people are amazing. It's the police and government that I fear. I guess if I visit I would have to be careful in choosing what state I go to.

That being said, I'm from Canada and if Harper has his way, I won't have to worry about the lack of freedom and the excess of police power in the USA since it will be the same at home anyway.

<comment><USER11> You are much more likely to have an accident with a moose in Canada than be shot by our Police or targeted by our Government.[1]

In the past 10 years I have had exactly two encounters with the police in a negative fashion. One for going over the speed limit and once for an illegal turn. _Most_ of them can be jerks but they are not out to get anyone.

Please dont believe the hype.

[1][http://www.nleomf.org/facts/research- bulletins/](http://www.nleomf.org/facts/research-bulletins/)

<comment><USER12> That source only talks about cases where officers were shot, not cases where officers were the ones doing the shooting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My friends made a Snake remake - <AUTHOR> http://sillysnake.co/ <comment><USER2> Nice job. I don't play much but this looks pretty addictive. Which tech do you use, and how do you plan to monetize?

</comment><comment><USER3> It reminds me so much of my young years on Atari #8bitnostalgia ;-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice playground it reminds me of good old times

</comment><comment><USER5> Great!</comment>


Show HN: I made a Web-based Todo App - used: CSS3 3D transforms, Node.js, love - <AUTHOR> http://tomorrow.do/ <comment><USER2> Awesome. One minor complaint: I added some tasks, thought, "man this is cool", and signed up--at which point you erased my tasks. Not a huge complaint, but they really should be transfered over to your newly-created account.

<comment><USER3> This could easily be done using local storage. I'm guessing the author has already run into this problem and is working on it though.

<comment><USER2> Local would defeat the purpose of a web app, as I'd have three different copies on my iPad, iPhone, and laptop.

He's already storing login info, so associating a few hundred bytes of text with that shouldn't be too difficult.

<comment><USER3> I suggested local storage only for the case where a new user (not logged in) has added some tasks and then decides to sign up. The tasks in local storage would then be added to the user once it is created. The local storage acts as a temporary storage location while the user is created. Having this work across platforms is not necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very good "Your browser is not compliant page." The Opera browser is CSS3, 3D Transform, Node.js capable. If you are doing certification using a browser check, do the following: Tell the user their website is not optimized for their browser, suggest the browsers as you have it on your site, then provide the user with the option to continue ahead with their current browser.

Here is a link to the logo so you can add it: (<http://media.opera.com/media/images/icon/Opera_512x512.png>)

Edited to be more constructive and helpful in addressing the issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am working on Opera, I tested it half-way but it has some issues I will have to work out before it will work perfectly.

<comment><USER5> In the future, could you just put a small warning, instead of blocking page completely?

I don't mind if I get page without some 3D transition, but a complete block gives an "F*U" impression, even if you are just working on making it perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems like your server(s) have gone down: I'm getting an '502 Bad Gateway' from nginx.

Would love to try it out!

<comment><USER7> It's at times like these where I wonder if the Node.js community overhypes their "webscale" framework. Evented or not, if your server doesn't have the resources to serve up the requests, things are going to break in fun ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My favorite part is the "I am a new user" button - very slick!

<comment><USER9> It's very cool. It takes the "don't make me think" principle to the next level by forgoing "options" like "Register a new user" or "Create a new account" and instead makes the action a simple fact. I _am_ a new user!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a big fan of taskwarrior, a CLI todo list for linux. I find I use it more than web based ones as I'm always in the console so there's little mental mode switching to use it. Basically not having to go to a browser or touch the mouse makes all the difference.

I'd love it if someone made a todo web app that could sync with taskwarrior. You then get the online slick interface of the web app with the low friction accessibility of the console interface when in the zone at work.

<comment><USER11> Must check it out. First thing to try would be to link its configuration folder from my Dropbox folder to get cross-PC syncing.

<comment><USER10> Yeah - this works well and there are no catches. The data is in a few human readable files and there's a path in the config file (.taskrc) pointing to the directory where they live.

So you just move the data folder to your dropbox and edit your .rctask file accordingly. Of course you need to do this for every computer, so it makes sense for the few machines that you usually use but you don't really get the available-anywhereness of an online app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very svelte! Maybe I'm being an idiot - but how do you turn the pages? I can only see today and tomorrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do It (Tomorrow) is based on a simple concept where you can just look at what you have to do today and push less important things to later.

The "days" aren't literal dates, add todos to today - they will stay on that page forever until you cross them off or delete them. The pages are more like 'now' and 'later', at least that's how I use it.

Boing Boing did a nice review of the iPhone App and they explained the concept better than I probably can <http://boingboing.net/2011/03/08/of-the-many-many- fac.html>

<comment><USER13> Yeah the way I do it I have two todo lists- one for Today, and one for This Week. Each night I move stuff from my This Week list into my Today list to be done the next day. That's how I will use this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow... love the design & the UI realism. I would iterate on the font for the actual to-do though. It's very hard to read.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow! Everything looks amazing. You really did a good job trying to make it look good. Unfortunately, it's not something I would really use.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is cool. I'm one of the guys who makes WorkFlowy.com, so I always check out new to-do/list making apps. I'm almost always like, "This is super lame," but not this time. This app actually seems quite nice. I'd like to be able to flip forward/backward in the planner, as that aligns with the metaphor nicely.

Anyway, nice work.

<comment><USER17> At first I wanted to be able to flip forward / backward as well, but on second thought, maybe only being able to add todo's for today and tomorrow is a plus ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obviously you are shooting for a realistic UI. I don't think the current strikethrough image is very realistic since I do not draw the same line every time I cross an item out in real life. I suggest you make use of a sprite image to implement multiple lines.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Obligatory 'this is a first release' disclaimer :D

<comment><USER19> Nice, very cutting-edge. Thought you would like to know, though, that it almost brought my browser down (locked up all tabs solid for 8 seconds straight). Using Chrome 14.0.825.0 canary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can you do a full breakdown of how this was built? Love the page flipping transition!

<comment><AUTHOR> The Page Flip is in Chrome and Safari, but when I started it was going to just be a perk for Safari as Chrome didn't support 3d perspectives.

I noticed one day that the beta channel of Chrome had started to support 3d perspectives, but to my distress their support was buggy and left graphical artifacts. I submitted bug reports and luckily in the latest Chromes it works just as nicely as Safari.

The big thing I got into on this project is CSS animations. They look a bit scary at first but in practice they are not too complicated. I did a mixture of JQuery animation and CSS transitions on this and both have their strengths.

The Node.js code is very simple, it's a small sync script that sits behind nginx. Todos are stored on S3, I used my in-progress S3 library for node.js - can see this here - [https://github.com/alexbosworth/Node-S3/blob/master/aws-s3.j...](https://github.com/alexbosworth/Node-S3/blob/master/aws-s3.js)

<comment><USER21> Just curious, but why'd you decide to use nginx instead of a node-based web server (i.e. serving stuff up via Express)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I only use nginx because it is a proven component and I don't think node can improve on that much there

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, slick and simple interface. As somebody who was always better at carrying a new paper list each day than dealing with things like RTM or Google Tasks, but also doesn't always have something to write down new things to do, I think this just might be the app I never knew I wanted. I'll be trying it out over the next few days.

One question -- why is the password input in plaintext on the Android app? I don't like the thought that somebody could get hold of my device and see my password just sitting there in plaintext if they just went to settings...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - Watch for an update that will fix this on the Android App

<comment><USER23> Yes, wouldn't want someone else to do my tasks for me!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow. Just wow. When I clicked the link on HN I never expected something that good. I was especially amused at the login/signup trick. Frankly, the whole thing caught me off guard.

Hats-off to you sir.

</comment><comment><USER25> _(shameless plug)_ I wrote a simple to-do app (weekly planner) for my own use (now has a few thousand users): <http://weekis.com>

<comment><USER26> Wow, promoting your own similar app in someone else's Show HN is pretty stale.

<comment><USER27> "Show HN" isn't a promise of free advertising. The point is to get feedback (and to show off, of course) and pointing to competing products can be great feedback and add to the discussion in here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's a bug in Chrome 12.0.742.122 where when you logout an extra book shows up on the bottom right of the original book.

This looks great, I love the page turn animation.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Logout extra book bug is a Chrome bug, but they have fixed it in the beta channel and this problem should go away when they roll out Chrome 13

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nice design...

The fonts are a bit rough, i think cannot read them well and I got 28 and 0 eye problems so people with more age and eye problems will have a hard time reading it. maybe making it a little bigger and getting some better fonts try www.typekit.com or something.

Anyway great design, the app in itself is not useful for me as ConceitedCode6 pointed I like portable todo lists, maybe an Iphone app ?

Congrats !

<comment><USER30> Ya, awesome design.

I'd change the default font to something more readable, remove the coffee stain from the page, let people flip a few pages ahead (otherwise, why use the notebook paradigm?), and change the "i'm a new user" flow -- the form field animation is pretty and ingenious, but it's also confusing, so I don't think it's worth it.

<comment><USER31> >let people flip a few pages ahead

Apparently, the concept is that you only have two queues/stacks, "now" and "later." I do agree that this isn't very intuitive from the design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Very nice job. Only two problems jumped at me, and mostly because everything else is so smooth:

1) switching a task's date should make the other side slide to make room, rather than jump.

2) finishing / unfinishing a task doesn't always respond to clicks, especially after a minor drag. Not sure what's going on to cause this.

Beautiful and live demos are the _best_ :) Fantastic work!

</comment><comment><USER10> My plea to the HN community; stop solving the same problems. If you really want to make something that people want then find something that people don't already have. This may be outside you area of immediate experience.

(Note - this comment was made without seeing the app - getting 502.)

<comment><USER33> _stop solving the same problems_

Eh... what? If we didn't stop solving the same problems we would still be using WordPerfect and Google wouldn't exist. And without seeing it how do you know what it is even doing?

<comment><USER10> I didn't say stop improving on solutions that miss the mark. I just think there is a lot of unexplored territory for software developers. People like to solve problems they have and understand. To do list apps are the classic example for developers. I'm just saying there's a lot of opportunity out there if you step outside your comfort zone.

All I know about this app is that it's a web based todo app. I was clear on this so to pick me up on it is a bit out of line. A better response would be to point out how it improves on what's already available.

<comment><USER34> >> A better response would be to point out how it improves on what's already available.

For starters, the UI is something that I haven't really seen before and its pretty neat.

Second, I do like the concept of today/tomorrow - think that's a nice way to encourage planning and doing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Super slick! The concept of just limiting people to today and tomorrow should keep us from descending into the swirling always-planning-but-never-doing- vortex-of-doom. Only complain: the handwritten font you chose, while cool, renders very jaggily in chrome on windows.

</comment><comment><USER36> Very nice design and implementation. I could not resist to see your JS code. In <http://tomorrow.do/dit.js> line 676, why the spinner image is in this file as a data URI?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - There is no real reason for that :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps add a clear button for both days, pressing the (-) button isn't fast enough. Also, when adding a task while in edit mode the button doesn't show up until going out and into edit mode.

</comment><comment><USER38> Hey, This is really cool. I am sure you are going to move some of the procrastination from the world, away. I am going to use this over any "To Do" app. Thanks for building this...

</comment><comment><USER39> Love it. Great design.

Some thoughts:

\- I tried to drag some tasks from "today" to "tomorrow" and couldn't. Ended up marking a task as done instead.

\- The animation when you click the arrows is a little confusing and hard to follow.

<comment><USER40> Seconded. The design is just great.

I also tried drag and drop. Both between today and tomorrow and a way to change the ordering. It'd be great to see that functionality.

Really nice work, guys!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Also, in chrome on windows 7 the text-shadow on the explanation paragraph renders as white because you forgot to add the blur pixel. This looks nice:

text-shadow: black -1px -1px 1px;

</comment><comment><USER41> Looks great. teuxdeux.com is similar in pushing incomplete to-do's from the past into the future. This one is nice, really simple, and fun.

</comment><comment><USER42> Gorgeous design! I don't know how practical it is.

</comment><comment><USER43> Veeeeeeeeeeeery class! I was about to send you an email to help you build an android app for this but you already done this. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER33> Very simple and great idea! I would use this if it would do landscape view on my Android tablet. Any plans on doing that?

<comment><USER44> Landscape on android phone as well. Many slide out keyboards are to the side.

Getting a 502 bad gateway from nginx on the web version at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I like the font-face feature of CSS3. I just whipped up a font based on my handwriting, and now it's on my blog.

</comment><comment><USER46> You will take <http://thn.gs> from my cold, dead hands.

<comment><USER47> Wow, I love the UI but I found it a bit buggy (show new task when I click on tag)

<comment><USER46> Has been working great for years here, no bugs to speak of across 3 browsers and 3 OSes. Notifo notifications are amazing. UI is second to none. Flawless local/offline sync, so no downtime ever. Tagging system works great, and it's how I know what to do next all day.

My only gripes are

1) no mobile version (it works on my iPhone, but it's not the optimal experience to have to drag left and right. a dedicated app would be better imo)

2) there's no faqs/documentation/getting started guide/features/nada. No help desk if you're stuck or having problems. Despite all this, it has lots of users still apparently. Contacting the developer valentin shergin (yandex guy) is a shoot and miss. Development seems to have slowed down a lot, but there's some new features popping up here and there. Mostly active in Russian community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is awesome. User Interface is pretty cool as if to write a memo on paper.

</comment><comment><USER49> I have to commend you, to are the mobile apps also built using html5 and css3.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The mobile Apps are written native to their respective platforms

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I never knew all this was possible with CSS. Amazing! Good work :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Bug: Email address is case-sensitive for login.

</comment><comment><USER51> like it. login isn't persisent with a cookie or something, so everytime i'm getting the same welcome msg.

<comment><AUTHOR> Login stickiness is using localStorage and no cookies are used, but that seems to be causing problems for some people :(

I am trying to get this one sorted

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Can I ask what provider are you using?

<comment><USER53> Looks to be EC2.

IP: 126.96.36.199

Whois: Amazon.com, Inc. AMAZON-EC2-7 (NET-184-72-0-0-1) 188.8.131.52 - 184.108.40.206

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Does not render properly on webOS. =(

</comment><comment><USER55> How long did this take you to do?

</comment><comment><USER56> This is insane. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER57> why do i get logged out every time i refresh the page?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious too, I have heard about the remember me not sticking, but can't pin it down :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER59> Love the UI!

</comment><comment><USER60> very cool!!!..keep it up guys!!

</comment><comment><USER61> Well done.

</comment><comment><USER62> So, 502. Can you please (seriously) write a post about what your server setup is and what its like to be deal with the rush of traffic. I'll be doing it one day soon and all the info I can get would really help!

<comment><AUTHOR> The issue was pretty mundane, the server script is very simple - so I assumed it wouldn't need to have a lot of monitoring overhead to deal with traffic spikes.

Even though it's a very simple script the volume of traffic used up all the memory on the machine leading to server death, then my restart script turned out to be wrong :(

<comment><USER63> Check out cluster for node.js. It will automatically create worker processes and restart them as needed. The use upstart, monit, etc to keep the master node process running.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Slick. Two suggestions:

1) On Android, remove the delete confirmation. Undo bar would be better than pressing that ugly OK button.

2) Keep it at Today/Tomorrow only. It's a great anti-feature.

</comment><comment><USER65> Mm... I love the look and design of your web app. Just wondering, were you the only person worked on that app? or did someone else provide the design (i.e. graphics, CSS styling)?

Personally, I applaud you for coming up such a great app. I can only wish I can achieve the level of work that you do, but I think I care too much about Internet Explorer users to come up with something that require Firefox/Chrome/Safari... it is definitely a fine balance or choice you make.

<comment><AUTHOR> I coded it and did participate in the design, but I definitely didn't make the App alone!

Do It (Tomorrow) is an Adylitica production - you can read about my company here: <http://adylitica.com/> \- our team: <http://adylitica.com/team>.

IE support may come in the future, but it is very labor intensive as IE is really far behind, even in IE9.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> This shit ROCKS Truly the ultimate procrastination app</comment>


Why revolution is no longer possible (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/why-revolution-is-no-longer-possible/ <comment><USER2> I've been feeling this for a while now, where everything feels wrong. Airbnb is destroying peoples homes just by existing - feels like it at least. I found myself trying to sell and market myself all the time, with no time to myself. Even now I'm logged into facebook and felt I needed to share some article I found, because I felt that people needed to know this - and then I reminded myself that I'm doing FB for marketing only.

This world is giving me the creeps, I want to live in a world of "perry rhodan" positive future, not in "Shadowrun"</comment>


This is what a female engineer looks like - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/403466/this-is-what-a-female-engineer-looks-like/

<comment><USER2> It seems a bit strange that with all the hate the term "brogrammer" tends to garner, this article has chosen to go with the term "wogrammer" for female engineers.

Seems counter-productive.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you start working on a new project? - <AUTHOR> Let's say you have a new idea you want to work or a new contract to develop a product from scratch. How do you get started? Normally what I do is I start coding right away, come up with an MVP of sorts and keep improving stuff till I can. But this, to be honest, feels very hectic and disorganized. So I am just curious about what workflow people prefer when working on a small, one-person project. <comment><USER2> I try to pace myself down, and think about the general idea for a day, making notes and sketches.

I also check what solutions already exist, so I don't feel like I wasted time reproducing something that already exists without added value.

Exceptions are programming problems I'm just interested in solving myself, to get a better idea about the specific problem</comment>


Let's make ad-blocking the default - <AUTHOR> http://into.technology/articles/lets-make-adblocking-default

<comment><USER2> Because the choice of an adblocker should be left to the user. Adblock plus and Adblock both make a lot of money by letting some ads unfiltered in the default settings. That kind of behaviour could not be allowed built in in a browser like firefox. Plus they have the risk of website boycotting the browser, in the same way than website today forbid adblock, but way more powerful because it could be done server side.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm scared of the day we block ads by default. Sure the internet will briefly be a nicer looking domain.

But then sites will support themselves through alternative means, some better, some worse, than the ads we used to have.

And the ads we will still get, on or off the internet will be less informed of our behaviours, resorting to meta-tactics to grab our attention besides simply being relevant to our interests.

As much as I hate the way ads can be displayed to me, I like it when they're relevant to my interests, I like it when I can peruse a quality site that exists because of ad revenue. And I know that I can seek out the ability to block the more annoying ones.</comment>


558M-year-old fossils identified as oldest known animal - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/20/558m-year-old-fossils-identified-as-oldest-known-animal <comment><USER2> The article states that the fossil was "an animal", without further explaining what actually constitutes "an animal", or what characteristics made it unique compared to other organisms at the time (or now for that matter). Maybe it's evident to people in the field, to a layman (like me) the term 'animal' is fairly fuzzy.

I went to Wikipedia and found this definition: "With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development".

So these 'Ediacarans' fall into this category?

<comment><USER3> They mean "an animal" in the cladographic sense as being part of the same evolutionary tree as modern animals, and not e.g. lichens or funguses. Specifically, they seem to have detected cholesterol (or some decay product thereof maybe) in the fossil, which is a lipid that only animals make.

The identity of the ediacaran fauna has long been controversial. They don't "look like" modern animals (all of whom descend from forms that appeared later, in the cambrian explosion), so they're hard to place. This is a big, big result if it holds up.

FWIW: this is the Wikipedia article you want to be reading: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The paper: [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/1246)

Here's a bit more on what they did:

>We applied a new approach (17) to test the lichen, protist, and animal hypotheses by studying biomarkers extracted from organically preserved dickinsoniids. Hydrocarbon biomarkers are the molecular fossils of lipids and other biological compounds. Encased in sedimentary rock, biomarkers may retain information about their biological origins for hundreds of millions of years. For instance, hopanes are the hydrocarbon remains of bacterial hopanepolyols, whereas saturated steranes and aromatic steroids are diagenetic products of eukaryotic sterols. The most common sterols of Eukarya possess a cholesteroid, ergosteroid, or stigmasteroid skeleton with 27, 28, or 29 carbon atoms, respectively. These C27 to C29 sterols, distinguished by the alkylation pattern at position C-24 in the sterol side chain, function as membrane modifiers and are widely distributed across extant Eukarya, but their relative abundances can give clues about the source organisms (24).

</comment><comment><USER5> It's remarkable that the components of the nerve system are very ancient and were all in place in the ur-bilaterian.

<comment><USER6> It's crazy how life just kept building and building on itself. I feel like there were so many opportunities for life to hit a ceiling and never evolve past X stage but yet somehow we broke out.

<comment><USER7> If I recall correctly, the division between prokaryotes and eukaryotes took billions of years. Multicellular life was another big step.

Everything after that is easy. I remind myself that every morning. :-)

<comment><USER8> I've heard this said many times and believed it, but read to day that the leap from single-cell to multi-cellular organisms happened a dozen or so times independent of each other. That makes it an order of magnitude less improbable, if true.

<comment><USER9> Yep, from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism#Occurre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism#Occurrence)

> [...] _However, complex multicellular organisms evolved only in six > eukaryotic groups: animals, fungi, brown algae, red algae, green algae, and > land plants. It evolved repeatedly for Chloroplastida (green algae and land > plants), once or twice for animals, once for brown algae, three times in the > fungi (chytrids, ascomycetes and basidiomycetes) and perhaps several times > for slime molds and red algae._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone have any details about how they know the bio markers were the result of cholesterol?

<comment><USER11> Up above there's a link to the paper: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18050904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18050904)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I read such news, I wonder how people reconcile such discoveries backed by scientific validation, with religious texts that provide other timelines and explanations.

<comment><USER13> I can give one example explanation. My Father is an evangelical Christian (FYI, I am not, I am an atheist and a science enthusiast). I have asked him this exact same question out of curiosity. Here is the answer he gave (albeit just one perspective). He said "God is so powerful that he can do anything including placing all that evidence there to test our faith". That shuts down any reason to continue a conversation (needless to say this is a topic we generally avoid).

Someone once said (not sure the attribution) "never try to reason with someone who has irrational beliefs".

<comment><USER14> Your father's beliefs are not necessarily irrational, they are just based on different assumptions. Your assumption is that the order in the universe arises from causality and physical law. His assumption is that the order in the universe arises from purpose, i.e. he believes in teleology. That is not in and of itself irrational.

<comment><USER15> I disagree, the belief system as described is strictly irrational, in the sense that its fundamental assumptions contain a inconsistency that then permits one to prove anything. (I.e. A = not A therefore anything.)

It's a case of a mind trained into a kind of _cul-de-sac_ with no way out. For some people this keeps them on the straight and narrow, for others it runs them smack into a wall. But it is certainly _irrational_ to believe in a Divine Omnipotent Creator who plays crude tricks on you.

<comment><USER14> > its fundamental assumptions contain a inconsistency

Really? What is it?

<comment><USER15> Well, rumcajz points out Bertrand Russell's objection, and apocalypstyx presents a fascinating aspect of the matter too, but the problem I'm talking about is the nature of implication/causation itself.

Rationality rests on implication.[1] The system we're talking about literally has "GOD -> anything" as an axiom, so it's useless for reasoning. If GOD -> (A -> B) for all A, B, and "->" then you can literally "prove" that anything implies anything else, or that _everything_ implies God, but you can't _disprove_ anything at all. Saying that there's a part of the system that can change anything about the system is essentially saying that there's no system at all. "Black is white and you get run over at the next zebra crossing."

If you believe that God will play tricks on you then you have nothing external to rely on. Again, this can be good or bad for a given person depending on their context. It's useless for reasoning, but you don't actually have to e.g. believe in Dinosaurs to reach God, so in that sense having no ability to rationalize can be a benefit if it prevents spiritual doubts. But many people instead are simply trapped in impoverished world-models. To wit: the Universe as revealed by scientific investigation redounds to the Glory of God _far more_ than, say, the concepts of "young-earthers", or people who believe God a trickster.

[1] This is actually the one article of _faith_ at the foundation of reason and rationality: that the Universe is comprehensible in terms of causation. The OP's father's god-image is jealous of even this wane and paltry rival.

<comment><USER14> > The system we're talking about literally has "GOD -> anything" as an axiom

No, the system we're talking about has _purpose_ as an axiom and God as a (perfectly rational) conclusion.

<comment><USER15> > the system we're talking about has _purpose_ as an axiom and God as a > (perfectly rational) conclusion.

I'm sorry, but I don't see that.

The quote was:

> "God is so powerful that he can do anything including placing all that > evidence there to test our faith"

To me, that reads as "God, therefore anything". Specifically _all evidence_ of X is evidence of God, even (and especially) if X contradicts God.

I don't see that it says, "Purpose, therefore God."

For what it's worth, responding to a sidereal comment of yours, I agree with you that "teleology, i.e. the assumption that existence has purpose, is not irrational".

<comment><USER14> > I don't see that it says, "Purpose, therefore God."

It doesn't. I'm extrapolating. I'm saying that it is _possible_ that such a conclusion can be arrived at rationally, for example, but starting from teleology as an assumption. Because this is possible, you cannot rationally conclude that a person is irrational just because they believe in God. They _might_ be irrational, but they might not. To settle the question you'd need additional data.

<comment><USER15> > it is possible that such a conclusion [God exists] can be arrived at > rationally ... starting from teleology [purposeful Universe] as an > assumption.

I agree and indeed I did something like that: I built a model of God based on the assumptions that feedback exists and time is eventually transcended by humans or other sentients through technology or other means. I eventually discarded that model, but it was arrived at rationally.

> Because this is possible, you cannot rationally conclude that a person is > irrational just because they believe in God.

I agree[1], however, I didn't do that. OP's father isn't irrational because he believes in God, he is irrational because he thinks God makes fake fossils. It's a concept of God so foolish as to disprove itself. If it were possible to mock God this would surely be the way to do it. The Flying Spaghetti Monster has more dignity.

[1] I am rational _and_ I believe in God, so it would be hypocritical of me to claim that a person is irrational just because they believe in God.

<comment><USER14> > he is irrational because he thinks God makes fake fossils

You can't know that without knowing how he arrived at that conclusion. You cannot judge the rationality or irrationality of conclusion simply by looking at the conclusion. When you do so, you are making the exact same mistake that atheists make when they look at you and decide that you must be irrational simply because you believe in Satya Sai Baba.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, I was using that as a kind of short-hand and obscured my meaning. That particular belief is a symptom of the underlying irrationality of his belief- structure but not in itself necessarily arrived at irrationally in the general case, eh?

> You can't know that without knowing how he arrived at that conclusion.

In this case we _do_ know how he arrived at that conclusion and we know that it was due to a form of reasoning that obviates itself, that his reasoning is irrational, that he is, in fact, _not_ reasoning by his own admission.

I can't say whether or not this religion is working for OP's father, but I can (and do) say that it is irrational, because it is irrational in its structure. Anyway, he doesn't have to reason correctly because (his) God(-image) does not require it, He is content with irrational faith.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Next 10 Years Will Be About "Market-Networks" - <AUTHOR> https://www.nfx.com/post/10-years-about-market-networks <comment><USER2> Look - the next 10 years is all about card-circulators. It's actually a combination of two things: Cards, which present business metadata such as contact info and personalized notes, and a circulator, which efficiently organizes and presents the best contact for any particular job _. We 're branding it Rolodex, but really, there is a whole industry ready to break the mold of traditional B2B.

_ the users will need to adjust to new ways of organizing and sorting, but some power users already have proven the new model.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article is from 3 years ago.

It might be useful to know that since then, Honeybook raised a series C ($14M, compared to a $22M B round) in June 2016 [0].

I see this as not necessarily a good sign of the health of the company (no rounds for 2 years, and a smaller C round), but that's only a superficial opinion of course.

This is not to discredit NFX's article or thesis, but just an FYI on the specific company mentioned in the article.

[0]: [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/honeybook#section- fu...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/honeybook#section-funding- rounds)

</comment><comment><USER4> Mods - please update title to show that this is from 2015.

Author says Honeybook Series B was "last month" \- it was Mar 2015 [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/honeybook](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/honeybook)

<comment><USER5> Heh. So if we're 3 years into "10 years that are about Market-Networks," how's that prediction aging?

<comment><USER6> How much are you willing to pay for that information?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It looks like HoneyBook pivoted from what is described in the article. Curious huh?

</comment><comment><USER8> I think there's a lot of potential in targeting markets where service providers are not commodities, but the higher value and subjectivity of the services they provide creates a greater challenge. I think getting clients and service providers to trust these new market networks will be much more difficult than it is to trust the Ubers/Lyfts because of the higher value. (I think AirBnB is actually pretty close to a market-network.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Uber doesn't seem like a market since the "sellers" can't actually set the price of their service.

</comment><comment><USER10> Instead of having a bunch of proprietary, centralized markets for each service, why not create an open source, p2p protocol for trade and let anyone offer anything they want?

Rhetorical question. It's called OpenBazaar and it's already in use around the world. I work on it and I hope the original article is correct that there's tremendous value in market networks.

<comment><USER11> you sound like Dwight Schrute

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm trying to differentiate "market network" from "marketplace" and I'm not clear that the distinction is adjacent but instead the latter is a type of the former.

The question then becomes: if presenting on this to an investor, how would another investor defend the difference as being more than just a repackaged term?

<comment><USER13> Same here.

Seems like (someone correct me if I'm wrong) the "network" part is about how users can have profiles and use these profiles as their portfolio. So a network of people/ providers.

Also, the SaaS part seems just thrown in there, like ketchup on French food.

<comment><USER14> >the "network" part is about how users can have profiles and use these profiles as their portfolio.

I'm not necessarily sold on their premise, but the network part is about types of fields where professionals are not interchangeable, so relationships, vetting, recommendations, professional cooperation are important dynamics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is also known among larger circles as an "economy".

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a lot that's missing on the thesis that needs to be explored.

1) How repeatable is a market-network that the workflow can be standardized?

2) For repeat providers, how can you provide more value to stay than to disintermediate? Note by the nature of the examples these are all high value situations.

3) An argument why these work flows and discovery tools are any better than Google + email + a document suite

I like where it's headed but we need to drill down a few more levels to understand value and pain points.

</comment><comment><USER17> LMAO this is such a stretch, there will be no one stop "market-network", markets will exist alongside markets like they always have, nothing new here and why in the world would anyone invest in such a thing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Network effects... This is not an insight. This is basic economics.

</comment><comment><USER19> who owns the data collected on the groups in the circle?

</comment><comment><USER20> Yeahhhhhh I'm not so sure</comment>


Ask HN: Which marketers do you closely follow? - <AUTHOR> I saw the "Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?" recently and thought to ask you similar question if I may. <comment><USER2> Watching and reading a lot from Seth Godin. For me at least, he finds a way to cut through the "self-help" BS, and inspire.

</comment><comment><USER3> Justin Jackson — [https://devmarketing.xyz/](https://devmarketing.xyz/) and [https://tinymarketingwins.com/](https://tinymarketingwins.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Gary Vaynerchuck, mostly because his short form videos are entertaining and motivating.</comment>


Show HN: Design any chat or voice interface - <AUTHOR> https://botsociety.io <comment><USER2> This looks really cool. It reminds me of a tool called Storyline that was basically a WYSIWYG for Alexa skills. They shut down the tool and went enterprise I believe. It was quite fun to play around with and make skills.

Your tool looks even more all encompassing (covers many more use cases and devices)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes exactly. We think that a tool that does not encompass every use case and device is too narrow and not appealing to the design community</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is this game work safe? Do you know its origin? - <AUTHOR> I knew this game from years ago, we played it at a company event recently and everyone had tons of fun.
I published the game under creative commons.
However I'm worried if this could be taken as offensive, or just not suitable for work events.
https://www.thegameofholes.com/
Am I worrying for no reason?
Also if you know anything from its origins please let me know. <comment><USER2> The link was down when I clicked, but it does not matter.

If you are concerned that the game might be offensive and that concern is based on not wanting to offend people, then don't use it and find something else. Pretty simple.</comment>


Why Bicycling Infrastructure Fails Bicyclists - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2016/07/bicycling_needs_two_things_to_be_safer_better_infrastructure_and_better.html <comment><USER2> This is a solved problem in most of Europe.

Bikes should never be next to cars. Widen the sidewalk and cut bike paths. Problem solved.

Best example: The Netherlands including Amsterdam.

<comment><USER3> You will still have the problem of cars turning across the bike lanes. This is especially danger-prone for right-hand turns (where traffic drives on the right) because cyclists on a roadside path are often in a blind spot for the driver.

Statistics probably prove otherwise but I feel most safe/most visible when I'm riding in the same lanes with automobiles.

<comment><USER4> I also ride a bike and I feel safest when I am on a separate path, well away from the distracted drivers playing with their phones while "driving" their 4WDs...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every time I crashed my bike in NYC, it was due to a taxi passenger flinging the door open to get the driver to stop. Not once was it a parked car or someone turning into my lane. Anecdotal, yes, but I doubt I'm the only one.</comment>


Show HN: Daily email with remote jobs at tech startups - <AUTHOR> http://jobscri.be

<comment><USER2> Bait.

<comment><AUTHOR> See the example: jobscri.be/sample

Launching in a few days!

<comment><USER2> I'm looking forward to it.

But stealing my email with promises doesn't make me happy ;)

Maybe the promises are empty, like on most sites on the web, what do I know...</comment></comment></comment>


Comparing the CPU of the iPad Pro 9.7 to My MacBook, Surface and 6S - <AUTHOR> http://stephencoyle.net/projects/single-core-studies/ <comment><USER2> Sadly the data is useless without the exact compiler flags.

I get 18.0658 with default "g++ PrimeChecker.c -o PrimeChecker" and 11.7689 with "g++ PrimeChecker.c -O2 -o PrimeChecker"

edit: the hardware is an i7-4870HQ, quite close to the i7-4850HQ that's in the blogpost (+200MHz clock)

<comment><USER3> I'm running an i7-6700k, on Windows 10 with the MSVC 2015 compiler, my results were 9592 primes between 0 and 100000 Time taken = 12.808 Without optimisations, and 9592 primes between 0 and 100000 Time taken = 10.853 with full optimisations. I would ahve thought it would have been much better. without and with optimisations.

<comment><USER4> It is wasting a lot of time with the pointless bool assignments. See my post below.

<comment><USER3> But then I'm not running the same code as either the parent of my comment, or the article, and the benchmark doesn't hold. It's how fast can my CPU run the same code vs theres. I could make it faster again by precomputing a table and doing a lookup but that defies the point!

<comment><USER4> Very good point. I was just surprised how much that simple bool assignment slowed things down so massively.

<comment><USER3> I started at 10.853, and with very little effort brought it down to 0.003

The slowdown isn't in assigning the bool; If you pass in 10000000 into that function, it's going to get isPrime set to true on the first iteration, but if you early out, you save all of those values. Again, this isn't really the point of the exercise, it's supposed to be comparing the performance of the same piece of code ran on different hardware.

[https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c6d5bae04334cbc7ef9583ebb7...](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/c6d5bae04334cbc7ef9583ebb7faf587)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I ran the C++ version on my i7-2640M laptop (ThinkPad T420s) and got 20.394s

Interestingly it is almost identical to his 2-generation newer MacBook Pro.

Edit: and if I fix isPrime to not waste using the prime bool I get 1.862s

Edit 2: and with my horrible Java copy&paste version[0] I get 2.050s

Edit 3: ok final edit but doing squareroot(n)+1 you speed it up to 0.012s for C++ and 0.019ms for Java. Fast enough for me, good night :)

[0] [https://gist.github.com/anonymous/0709e1807f57b686683f3e5f7b...](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/0709e1807f57b686683f3e5f7b010558)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is not comparing CPUs, this is comparing execution times on the different hardware of several pretty non-descriptive programs written in different languages without even properly describing the compile step, which is basically meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not at all familiar with the Apple development ecosystem, but since Swift has been open-source, why not run the swift version on all platforms? There are vast differences in the implementations of C++ and Swift, even if both are compiled to native machine code.

That aside, given the hype behind Apple devices, I'm sure there have been loads of benchmarks published already. What I would personally be more interested in, would be to see how the A9X fares against Intel's Core M's, which have a similar power envelope.

<comment><USER7> > For some reason the Swift version took much longer to run on the Macs. > Something on the order of 50-65 seconds. I presume I overlooked some > optimisation or compiler setting.

A version which shows the iPad performance crushing the Macs, not because of CPU performance but because of some kind of Swift performance regression on desktop, would not have been interesting

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It'd be more interesting to see a test with more branching as that is the one big area where x86 CPUs tend to shine compared to "simpler" architectures (or things like GPUs).

Also, I don't think this exercises the Floating-Point units for these CPUs (haven't looked at the code though).

<comment><USER9> Yeah. This was another benchmark that found that an earlier Apple CPU got impressive instructions-per-clock on a couple of cryptographic functions (that aren't special-cased like AES): [https://zerobyte.io/blog/2014/04/29/benchmarking- symmetric-c...](https://zerobyte.io/blog/2014/04/29/benchmarking-symmetric- crypto-on-the-apple-a7/)

But those functions also don't really stress-test branch prediction, etc. They use instruction-level parallelism but the control flow and memory accesses are predictable. (That's almost necessary for software crypto; if execution isn't ~constant-time, you risk timing attacks.)

Looking at transistor counts: Apple said the three-core A8X had three billion transistors total. Given Apple's focus on GPU and bringing other components onto the SoC, many of those are not spent on the cores; still, in raw count, it's right up there with Intel's Core-branded CPU+GPU dies, going by a table in Wikipedia.

AnandTech put up a lot of numbers about the A9, including specs like cache sizes and memory bandwidth and benchmarks like Geekbench and SPEC: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple- iphone-6s-and-i...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple- iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-review/4)

Seems like, at a minimum, if your intuitions about mobile performance come from early in-order chips, they may not apply to Apple CPUs or even the many Cortex-A57-based SoCs out there. But it also doesn't seem like you can say those chips are up there with Intel ones in general. I guess the evergreen- but-not-wrong conclusion is that to really know your code's performance, you wan to test it on hardware as similar as possible to what it'll really run on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since both Visual Studio and Xcode support C++, why not just run the C++ version on all platforms?

</comment><comment><USER11> I recently delved into Prime Number computation algorithms, and found that the fastest algorithm was outlined by the primesieve.org project: [http://primesieve.org/segmented_sieve.html](http://primesieve.org/segmented_sieve.html)

Their algorithm optimizes around L1 cache size. I'm not sure of the L1 cache size on Apple's SOCs, but to my knowledge Intel has been using 32KB for a while. It'd be cool to see the primesieve.org algorithm on these devices optimized for their respective L1 cache sizes.

I took a stab at converting their algorithm to a Go program, but primesieve.org's C version still runs orders of magnitude faster.

My Go Program and times: [https://github.com/caleblloyd/primesieve](https://github.com/caleblloyd/primesieve) Primesieve.org published times: [http://primesieve.org/](http://primesieve.org/)

EDIT: If you have any performance suggestions for my Go version of primesieve, I've opened an Ask HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11413827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11413827)

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if the fact that it scans 2..<number instead of 2..sqrt(number) and doesn't break upon discovering a factor has any impact on the relative speeds due to differences in branch prediction.

</comment><comment><USER13> For what it's worth, my i5 surface pro 4 executed this little program in 20.891 s (complied with mingw64-gcc) i.e. 0.9x

Pleased to see that it is twice as powerful as the i3 surface pro 3 :)

<comment><USER13> And 0.124 s with sqrt(n) and -Os & 0.02 s by interrupting the for... Let's go further than 100000 :)

664579 primes between 0 and 10000000 Time taken = 11.319

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The i7 2600 is from January 2011 making it over 5 years old and it's still faster. Just not rediculusly so.

<comment><USER15> I got i7 2600K @ 5Ghz with water cooling. Very hard to find replacement. Test run 16.05s

<comment><USER14> Don't get me wrong I also have a 2600K and have been somewhat disappointing with Intel's progress. But, for most workloads the current generation really is significantly faster.

PS: That's an impressive OC, I capped out at 4.2Ghz with air cooling, then pulled it back down to 4.0 for extra safety margin.

<comment><USER15> How much is significantly faster? 30%? I need fast Scala compilation and I am not impressed with new processors. I am waiting for Skylake-EP, it has good OC potential and could handle 256GB DDR4 and bunch of NVMes.

For stable OC you need water. Air cooling will overheat too soon.. Sometimes I run 24/7, the computer is very loud but stable. Dont ask for voltage, its way in red. This is what I use: [http://www.antec.com/product.php?id=704370&pid=17&lan=us](http://www.antec.com/product.php?id=704370&pid=17&lan=us)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I ported test into java. C++ version runs 16.05s on my computer, Java is bit faster 14.58

[https://gist.github.com/jankotek/8fcb8205dbe1b8d131cdac2cc23...](https://gist.github.com/jankotek/8fcb8205dbe1b8d131cdac2cc2342f36)

<comment><USER16> Interesting. C++ and Java are very near on my machine:

        java Prime
        9592 primes between 0 and 100000
        Time taken = 18.484
        9592 primes between 0 and 100000
        Time taken = 18.25
        9592 primes between 0 and 100000
        Time taken = 18.087
        ...

C++: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11412820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11412820)

<comment><USER15> Do you have Java8? It has many improvements

<comment><USER16> I'm on Debian and not familiar with Java. I did that:

        aptitude install openjdk-8-jdk

<comment><USER15> thats java8

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can we get a left-pad.io benchmark?

</comment><comment><USER16> A previous topic about nbench: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11252358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11252358)

</comment><comment><USER18> > quite a few suggestions for how the code could be optimised.

Pointless optimization is the meth of the slightly obsessive.

</comment><comment><USER19> Single-core performance tends to depend heavily on clock speed. Would be interesting to see what those were.

</comment><comment><USER20> One can kinda tell by looking at the code that the author hasn't written code professionally. At least not for very long.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't matter much for his test, because the compiler won't optimize it, but one can simplify the loop to only go from 2...n/2+1 e.g. change the line to:

for(int a=2; a<n/2+1; a++)

That would be the obvious optimization, since 2 is your smallest factor, a factor can't be larger than half your number. In actuallity, knowing a little math gives you that if a factor is > the square root of n, there's a factor smaller than that. So:

for(int a=2; a<sqrt(n)+1; a++)

<comment><USER22> And it would be better to move the sqrt(n) calculation outside of the loop (I guess that any decent compiler would make this simple optimisation anyway)

<comment><USER21> Yeah, that would only be evaluated once, since the value of n doesn't change inside the loop.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: In case you missed it, the history is fixed - <AUTHOR>

For a long time the length of the history lists in HN was limited to 10 pages, then it became even less (7 I believe was the lowest). Now it seems we have infinite history lists again. Great! Thanks! <comment><USER2> What is the history list?

<comment><AUTHOR> Click on your name in the top right corner, then click 'submissions' or 'saved'. (the first is what you submitted, the second is what you voted up).

Other examples of those lists are the 'news', 'newest' and 'ask' lists, they too were limited and seem to be unlimited now.

That's great because that means that you can use these lists to search for stuff that you voted up, which is more or less what social bookmarking is about.

<comment><USER2> Ah.. I use those lists all the time.. Did not know about the limits though. Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> PG announced some updates a few days ago. He mentioned that one of the side effects was the ability to make the change you describe.

BTW, as of yesterday, this "uncapping" of the history limit had not been extended to .../classic/ . [Pretty please? :-) ]</comment>


8 Reasons Why GrandCentral.com is a Must-Have Tool - <AUTHOR> http://bizglue.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/8-reasons-why-grandcentral-is-a-great-free-tool-for-your-business/

<comment><USER2> I thought Grand Central was great. One number for life. Awesome. Then they sent me an email informing me that they had to switch my number (which I printed onto business cards). I never went back.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hate to say it but I have to disagree. In the 6 or so months that we had an active GC number, we would just receive endless wrong-number messages. Perhaps there are some settings or options I neglected to set that would cut down on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> It has a spam folder that allows you to spam out certain numbers... hope this helps.

It obviously is not a perfect tool -- there's no such thing. But the value that it has coupled with the fact that it's free make it a very strong alternative to GotVmail.com and other options for storing and tracking voicemail's.

It's also pretty new. It will be even cooler this time next year.

<comment><USER3> thanks for the reply. IIRC, the problem for us was that the messages came from different numbers every time.. it's like GC yanked the phone number from someone that didn't pay their bills.

but yeah, nothing is perfect.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you inherited somebody else's debt collector problem. That's hilarious! I'm actually laughing as I write this because I know exactly what it feels like to have debt collectors calling. In fact, I just got a nice, shiny new letter from my friendly local attorney.

My 1st startup didn't go so well, nor was it structured well. So this summer I'm doing door-to-door sales to get out of debt. Kind of lame. I'd much rather work on my next startup, but I want my wife to stay sane....

<comment><USER4> At least you still have the desire to start a new co, the experience didn't kill your spirit!

<comment><AUTHOR> It took a while to get to this point. I ended up taking a (sort of) normal job after the experience. I had quasi-ownership in the company, but I wouldn't say it was a startup.

It helped me to get back my confidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> GrandCentral is great, but I frequently have issues with the sound quality when I retrieve voicemails over the phone. There will be frequent segments of garbled sound and I have to replay the messages repeatedly to get all the info.

</comment><comment><USER6> GrandCentral has been down for almost 8 hours now.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use Grand Central and it's great.</comment>


Make Your Business Card with Notepad++ - <AUTHOR> http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/make-your-business-card-with-notepad-plus-plus.html

<comment><USER2> Love it!</comment>


Scientists have wound electronic circuits into plants' vascular tissues - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1120/Beautiful-circuits-Dawn-of-the-cyborg-rose <comment><USER2> Goes well with the other article on the front page about DNA writing! [http://www.wired.com/2015/11/making- dna/](http://www.wired.com/2015/11/making-dna/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wonder what happens when you accidentally eat one of those plants.

<comment><USER4> If you somehow manage to accidentally eat a rose (the plant in the article), I'd be far more concerned about the large thorns than the electronics.

<comment><USER5> Rose petals are edible, though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Next up: ourselves. Bioengineering embedded circuitry into our skin. Forget wearable devices!

<comment><USER7> This would be a bad idea for multiple reasons, first up being that it increases the existential risk of humanity as a whole:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/25/us-electricity- sol...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/25/us-electricity-solarstorms- kemp-idUSKBN0FU20Q20140725)</comment></comment>


Spain security firm probed 'for spying on Assange for CIA' - <AUTHOR> https://news.yahoo.com/spain-security-firm-probed-spying-assange-cia-152919133.html <comment><AUTHOR> >> _According to El Pais, Undercover Global installed microphones in the embassy's fire extinguishers as well as in the women 's toilets where Assange's lawyers used to meet for fear of being spied on._

I guess if USA is after you, you have no chance. They'll spare nothing

<comment><USER2> Legitimately*

You dropped a word there.</comment></comment>


Hey Guys, Eron here with a legal update - <AUTHOR> https://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/3lvq0g/hey_guys_eron_here_with_a_legal_update/ <comment><AUTHOR> Eron is the ex-boyfriend of Zoey Quinn, the person who's actions touched off GamerGate. Whether you're pro-GG or anti-GG, his update is new information about the subject.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's amazing how in many jurisdictions, any claim by a woman against a man is accepted to be true. And many places assume women are so fragile that they need extra protection that would never be granted a man. This is what Feminism is about: special rights.</comment>


Show HN: Visualize GitHub: Visualizations of Your GitHub Repos - <AUTHOR> https://rocketgraph.com/reports/24-github-visualize <comment><USER2> I write libraries that get used by people who write websites that provide tools for creating visualizations of the number of commits made per day in the repository of a library used to make other libraries that get used in the building of services that power servers that provide free hosting of applications that help people write more code, commit more and then visualize how much they have commited.

<comment><USER3> Kinda begs the question, 'at what point do we start making the tools used in other industries better rather than constantly cycling our own'?

This is like a marketer who tweets about a commercial that was created to promote the twitter account.

As a result, The number of followers sky rockets, the account gets notice from all the major media outlets, and it's hailed as a great success in the marketing world. A disruptor, a peek into _the future_ of marketing.

Meanwhile, people who have real products and services are failing to reach their potential audience because super twitter self-referential marketing v2.0-beta is doninating the marketing industry.

Source: I write libraries too but oft times question the utility of such things.

<comment><USER3> Wow... Just stumbled onto a relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1629/](https://xkcd.com/1629/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is [dead]? - <AUTHOR> why not add this to the FAQ? <comment><USER2> Some members have the abilkity to flag posts and after a certain number of flags they disappear. Otherwise there would be a lot more spam. Occasionally people do the same thing to a comment or story they find objectionable for some reason.

<comment><USER3> More precisely:

Articles killed by user flags will have either "[flagged][dead]" or "[dupe][dead]". Comments killed by user flags will also have the "[flagged]" designation.

Articles that have only "[dead]" were killed either by a moderator, or by the site's software (e.g., due to the user or the domain being banned).

An article can be marked as "[flagged]" but not "[dead]" if it was killed by user flags and later revived by users (using the "vouch" function).

Dead articles won't be displayed unless you're a logged-in user who has "showdead" enabled in your profile.</comment></comment>


3D printing company MakerBot acquired by Stratasys for $403M - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/19/3d-printing-company-makerbot-acquired-by-stratasys-for-403m-in-stock-after-selling-22k-3d-printers/ Great move?<p>MakerBot, a Brooklyn, NY-based startup which makes desktop 3D printers for consumers and professionals alike, is being acquired by Stratasys, an Israeli-based 3D printer and additive manufacturer. The initial value of the proposed merger is $403 million based on Stratasys' stock price today. It's said that the combination of the two will aid in accelerating adoption of 3D printers by the mass market. <comment><AUTHOR> Do you think this move was absolutely necessary for MakerBot? 3D hobbyists out there, how do you feel about this?</comment>


Ask HN: How do I go about finding public data? - <AUTHOR> Say I wanted to know if I could find data on the number of public servants a particular city employs, and data on the sort of jobs these employees have, and any other related data?
I don't know the 1st step to take in terms of finding this data.
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> For the US, check the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

</comment><comment><USER3> Enigma.io

They have public datasets that might be useful.</comment>


GitLab 8.9 released with File locking and Environments - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2016/06/22/gitlab-8-9-released/? <comment><AUTHOR> We're extremely excited about this release and happy to answer any questions you might have.</comment>


Bill Gates Thinks About Poop - And You Should Too - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2012/08/14/bill-gates-thinks-about-poop-and-you-should-too/

<comment><USER2> It'd be neat... but it would certainly be awkward to have to "empty" the toilet every week or so...

I wonder if it's possible to make it fertilizer but with a minty fresh smell...</comment>


The Nine Dots Prize – Are digital technologies making politics impossible? - <AUTHOR> https://ninedotsprize.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Submission Statement

I found this on r/books. It seems to have been announced a couple of days ago. I wanted to find out what HNers think about the question and the competition, but for some reason nobody seems to have submitted it yet.

The question sounds odd at first -- one could easily say "No wai!" and that would be the end of it -- but surely there are more interesting things to say about it if we don't take it as a strictly binary question.</comment>


EC2: Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Base Install - <AUTHOR> http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?categoryID=101&externalID=1065

<comment><USER2> I'm new to EC2... how can one be sure that the image isn't bugged somehow? I guess you can't...

<comment><AUTHOR> It is working flawlessly for us so far.

<comment><USER2> Thanks... how much time how you been using it? Maybe I'll use it soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll be far more excited when the FreeBSD 7.0 AMI is available. :-)</comment>


Why you shouldn't copy us or anyone else - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1561-why-you-shouldnt-copy-us-or-anyone-else

<comment><USER2> Quick Summary of this article…

Whenever a successful person recounts how they got that way take note of it. When you start something new go over the list of things you took note of and use your own judgment to decide what will and will not work for you. But don't copy anything verbatim.

There, I just saved you like 3 minutes of life. You're welcome :)

<comment><USER3> "When you start something new go over the list of things you took note of and use your own judgment to decide what will and will not work for you. But don't copy anything verbatim."

Is this something that people really need be told? I suppose that's rhetorical, given the number of folks who swear by alleged methods of success that just happened to work (or be recollected as working) for one person or another.

<comment><USER4> People need to be told that. It disgusts me, the people who will steal half of one site and half another and put them together without thought, but they exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have found it is really beneficial to copy somebody else, but ONLY if you take the extra step of completely deconstructing the solution to understand exactly what makes it work. Once you've identified the inner workings of it you have gained the ability to change it to fit your needs and take it far beyond the original design. In short, learn the principles behind the design and you can apply it anywhere.

<comment><USER6> Really? I'm the opposite.

I will admit right now that I copy/borrow/steal design and concept ideas from other websites relentlessly.

I find, however, that I tend to do it for stuff around the periphery of an application. For example, how should my forgot password process work? What should my copyright notice look like? How should I format a success or error notification message? What should my button widgets look like?

Such things that are not central to the purpose of an application I am working I expend as little thought as possible on, and tend to copy whatever I see someone successful doing (hey, i think, if it didn't stand in their way, it probably won't stand in mine). I spend more of my "picking apart" brainpower on the original/unique stuff my app is doing.

Admittedly, I do a fair amount of copying of the kind you are referring to as well, but I don't entirely agree that that's the "only" kind of copying that's beneficial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought the link would point here:

<http://huddlechat.appspot.com/>

With the implied answer to the headline being: because we'll bust your knees if you even think about trying it.</comment>


Musk Can't Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-01/-math-doesn-t-lie-musk-can-t-dodge-tesla-cash-woes-any-longer <comment><USER2> > a fleet of self-driving vehicles that will make their way into the robotaxi > service as soon as next year.

So... are we living on the same planet? Does Musk seriously think that Tesla will have solved full autonomous driving, with no LIDAR, and have commercialized a functioning robotaxi service, by _next year_? This is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it's like saying he's going to Pluto next week.

<comment><USER3> I've always been skeptical of skipping LIDAR, but a recent study at Cornell found that with binocular vision they could be almost as accurate as LIDAR, but with much cheaper hardware.

[https://www.therobotreport.com/researchers-back-teslas- non-l...](https://www.therobotreport.com/researchers-back-teslas-non-lidar- approach-to-self-driving-cars/)

<comment><USER4> That study has been highly disputed by people in the field; the methodology is questionable at best for the claims they're making.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps, but you can't dispute that humans don't have LIDAR.

It's just a matter of time before AI can drive better than humans even if using similar vision. Especially in aggregate (e.g., factoring in distracted drivers).

<comment><USER6> Humans don't only have vision. Humans have an ocular-vestibular system that makes it possible to perform SLAM[1]-like processing; when in motion, your balance and visual input like the parallax effect can help the brain build a mapped 3D volume and determine your position, orientation and velocity and your relation to other objects within that volume.

VSLAM, visual SLAM, which is what you have to employ if relying largely on vision-only, is so far cruder than that.

I'm sure Tesla has some sensor fusion that also employs GPS and short-range radar/ultrasonar to help.

You can get some velocity and positional data through GPS, but it will have quite a lot of latency and is very coarse (at least the commercially accessible part).

SLAM is much, much easier to do with LIDAR since that will give you a point cloud 3D model. With VSLAM, you have to infer the depth data and build it up over time, and it's a much harder problem to solve reliably. OTOH, LIDAR's Achilles heel is, however, heavy rain/sleet/snow. Waymo has shown off using deep learning to filter the bulk of the noise out, but it looks like it's still early days there.

Vision isn't great for sleet/snow either, to be fair.

[1]: simultaneous localization and mapping

<comment><USER7> Tesla had a vid of their system doing that quite well [https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=8324](https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=8324)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article is a little disingenuous. The margins on model3's have been reported at 20% and they've been hugely successful in the market.

So now it makes sense to ramp up in China, in Europe and Japan etc. This obviously takes upfront investment before the product can be produced. All companies with a popular product face this kind of financing hurdle.

The difference now is that the end game of the automotive industry is now a fair bit clearer than it was even a few years ago. Most of the pieces are on the table you just have to put them together. Musk understands this, it appears that most other automotive makers are still in denial.

Tesla will need a _lot_ more financing before this game is done. Telsa is the current favorite, and up one set to nil, but with a lot of game left to play.

</comment><comment><USER9> Musk has done amazing things but his amazing ability to take risk and leverage is something that prevents me from investing into his business. The tech he is business develops is here to stay but investors may not get the return they want. There is endless stream of new ideas while not delivering fully on the old ideas (for the investors).

Tesla bet it's financial future into being able to mass produce Model 3 profitably in large quantities. The amount of debt Tesla has prevents them from retreating into smaller scale luxury cars. When Model 3 is in trouble, lets move to the taxi-scheme.

They have to dilute the stocks again and again and current owners see less of the (possible) future profits.

There will be some kind of economic slowdown or correction in the next few years. Tesla has maybe one more financing round left until the music stops.

<comment><USER10> Tesla has gone ~15x since IPO. Unlike virtually every other tech-related IPO, it was possible for retail investors to invest in a risky, growth-oriented company. They IPO'ed at a 2.2B cap, meanwhile all major tech-related IPOs seem to be about 10B.

If you're a retail investor looking for high risk/high reward stocks, Tesla was a rare exception. In most other cases, only large funds have access to growth companies like that. I'd like to see more IPOs like Tesla's, rather than reserving wealth growth only for those with tons of money.

In short, if you're not interested in taking advantage of an option, don't assume other people think the same way.

Also, the robotaxi is not some zany idea Musk randomly came up. It's been publicly on their website for 3 years now and in their internal road maps for long before that: [https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/blog/master-plan-part- deux](https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/blog/master-plan-part-deux)

It's really bizarre to see the constant condemnation of Musk, because he chooses to have an ambitions long-term plan and follow through with it.

<comment><USER9> If you a retail investor looking for high risk/high reward stocks, Tesla today is not what Tesla was during IPO. The need for more money and future stock dilution means that risk is significantly higher but reward is going to be lower.

<comment><USER11> > risk is significantly higher but reward is going to be lower.

Is that not true for all companies as they grow?

<comment><USER12> No; Microsoft (for instance) today is much less riskier than Microsoft in 1988. It likely won't experience meteoric growth, but neither is it likely to crash tomorrow. Ideally, risk/reward are inversely correlated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone with a scintilla of intuition about human behavior would have recognized at least a year ago that Musk was begging for a way out of Tesla. The talks he gave about how overworked he was, the tweets, and the violation of the judge's orders screamed out that he had given up.

<comment><USER14> He wants a way out of Tesla being a publicly listed company. If you had listened to him as much as you want to think you have you'd know his stress is due to obligations to shareholders and effectively working with one hand tied behind his back because as far as the board is concerned shareholder value is more important than anything else.

<comment><USER13> I didn't claim I had listened to him much. I remember his "Skynet is coming" remarks at the national governors association, and prior to warning about AI he made some rather sad comments about how the stress was getting to be too much for him. Watch it on YouTube. It was clear that he was at a breaking point. Not to mention the Rogan interview.

I think Musk realized some time ago that Tesla was going to get close, but just shy of long term profitability. He's looking for a way out that doesn't involve him saying "uncle".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ford has $150B in debt. Toyota has double that.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but Ford has revenues of $160B and Toyota has revenues of $2,642B vs Tesla's $21B. More importantly, both Toyota and Ford are profitable. In fact, both Ford and Toyota have profits larger than Tesla's entire revenue stream.

<comment><USER17> And I would assume a better, read positive, cash flow. Then debt is not such a big problem.</comment></comment></comment>